Category Archives: PA govt & politics

By Nathaniel Smith, Columnist, The Times of Chester County, July 28, 2015
Bill would let state make housing, zoning choices instead of local communities

Along with about 50 other people, I attended a hearing at West Chester Borough Hall on July 20 about House Bill 809 proposed to the PA House of Representatives.

On the positive side, we have a democratic process that allows citizens to find out what our legislators are doing and to hear differing views in a public forum.

On the negative side, the bill is a total disaster, as was made clear by speakers from West Chester, Lower Merion, Millersville, and State College. (Four realtors and landlords spoke for the bill, however.)

The principle is very clear, in my view, just what Mike McGann enunciated in his July 20 opinion piece on public education:

“What I am advocating for is to allow folks in local districts like Unionville to make their own choices – through their elected school board – on what is right for their community and school district. We don’t have that now.”

Does the state know best how a local school district should educate its own students? No.

Does the state know best how a municipality should zone property use for the benefit of its own residents? No.

House Bill 809, currently before the Committee on Local Government, would radically cut into municipalities’ ability to regulate rental properties. …

HARRISBURG >> It’s no secret that Harrisburg is a hive of lobbyists, each representing industries and interests that spend millions to persuade state lawmakers to bend laws in their favor.

But perhaps what makes the charter-school lobby unique among the pack, says State Rep. Bernie O’Neill, a Republican from Bucks County, is its ability to deploy children to its cause.

In 2014, O’Neill experienced that first hand after proposing changes to a funding formula that would affect charter schools. Parents and children stormed his office and barraged him with calls and emails.

“They were calling me the anti-Christ of everything,” O’Neill said. “Everybody was coming after me.”

In recent years, as charter schools have proliferated — particularly those run by for-profit management companies — so too has their influence on legislators. In few other places has that been more true than Pennsylvania, which is one of only 11 states that has no limits on campaign contributions from PACs or individuals.

According to a PennLive analysis of donations on Follow The Money, a campaign donation database, charter school advocates have donated more than $10 million to Pennsylvania politicians over the past nine years….
continue reading at Pottstown Mercury

On 9/8/14 the Daily Local News published a letter from me under the title “More women would be good for state and country.”

Though I don’t doubt that that title is literally true, what I really said is that “a record number of women and supporters of women’s rights elected to office in Harrisburg and Washington this year would be good for Pennsylvania and the country.”

As it happens, it would be good for Democrats too, as they have more women running. I’m going to say more here.

On August 26, Women’s Equality Day, people across the country celebrated the 94th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote.

As president Obama’s August 25 proclamation began by saying:

On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment was certified, securing for women the fundamental right to vote. The product of decades spent organizing, protesting, and agitating, it was a turning point on the long march toward equality for all, and it inspired generations of courageous women who took up this unfinished struggle in their own time. On the anniversary of this civil rights milestone, we honor the character and perseverance of America’s women and all those who work to make the same rights and opportunities possible for our daughters and sons….

As the president goes on to say, women deserve equal rights, treatment, pay, and opportunities. Shouldn’t that be obvious to every one of us?…

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvanians pay inflated taxes because the state’s public corruption rate is among the highest in the nation, says a scholarly study based on data from the Justice Department.

The report in Public Administration Review shows public corruption “implicitly causes taxpayers to pay more,” said John Mikesell, an economics professor at Indiana University and co-author of the study.

Corruption costs taxpayers about $1,308 per person more per year in states with the most corruption, compared to states with average corruption levels, the study says.

Justice Department data place Pennsylvania historically among the 10 most corrupt states. Statistics from 1976 through 2008 rank the state with Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, South Dakota and Alaska.

The Justice Department defines public corruption as “crimes involving abuses of the public trust by government officials,” including crimes ranging from bribery, extortion and vote-buying to obstruction of justice, money laundering and fraud.” The data included 25,000 government officials convicted of crimes.

More recent federal figures, from 2001-2010, show Pennsylvania in the top 10 based on every 10,000 government employees, but ranked below that tier on a per-capita basis.

The research by Mikesell and Cheol Liu of City University of Hong Kong goes a step further, saying public corruption “distorts” the direction of state spending. “Compared to less corrupt states, more corrupt states are likely to spend more on corrections, construction and police,” on average, than on “education, welfare and health,” Liu said….

Equality Fraternity Reality

Strong children

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken ones" —Frederick Douglass

Ignorance and Power

“Ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” -- James Baldwin

Money is power….

"Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many.”
— Rutherford B. Hayes, President of the United States 1877-1881

Let the people think….

Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed.”
-- William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, 1693

Taxes & budgets

Women's rights

Dehumanization

"The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human" - Aldous Huxley

Money is power

Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many.”
-- Rutherford B. Hayes, President of the United States (1877-1881)

Riots

“Riots are the language of the unheard” -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cost of War

Currently nearing $1.6 trillion, for Iraq and Afghanistan alone; watch it grow at Cost of War

The cause of war

"The cause of war is the preparation of war." -- W.E.B. DuBois

Presidential limits

"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

--Barack Obama, 2007

Totalitarianism

“To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.”

-- George Orwell

Reimagining capitalism

"Politicians argue over big government so they can avoid talking about big capitalism" -- William Greider in The Nation

The problem with democracy

Progressive calendar

Click hereto view calendar of progressive events in and near Chester County.Agenda view (click in upper right of calendar) may be best.

Links to other sites:

Let the people think …

"Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed."
--William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, 1693

On humor

"When oppressed peoples have no other remedy they resort to humor" --E. O. Wilson

Koch Brothers index

For a list of all posts relevant to the Koch Brothers on this site, click here.

Truth and consequences

"If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out." -- Oscar Wilde

Power

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

-- Frederick Douglass, 1817-95

Schools, parents, democracy

“What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.” -- John Dewey

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Liberty v. power

“The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.”
-- William Hazlitt, 1778-1830

On war

"No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic." - A. J. P. Taylor

Bill Moyers says

"The opposite of poverty is not wealth; it is justice."

Ain’t they got no shame

In the name of peace
They waged the wars
Ain't they got no shame

-- Nikki Giovanni

Need & Greed

"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not for every man's greed" -- Gandhi

Normalcy?

"If this is normalcy, I'd hate to see what real trouble is" - the late Daniel Shore on Iraq, Morning Edition, NPR, 3/29/08

Freedom and tyranny

"...So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom,
those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men." --Voltaire, 1764

Thoughts on War

"Every war, when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac." -- George Orwell

"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." -- Leon Trotsky

Total Cost of War

The cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars to Pennsylvanians alone is over $57,000,000,000 and to the entire US is over $1.3 trillion; now wouldn't that be helpful in Harrisburg and DC these days? Track our dollars' alarming and destructive disappearance at CostofWar.com

The American oligarchy

“The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight.” — Michael Lind, To Have and to Have Not